He picked up one of the brochures and was about to start reading it when a door opened behind the secretary and out stepped a strikingly handsome and confident-looking woman. She was in her early to mid-forties, he guessed, with beautifully groomed, shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing a slinky black trouser suit, shiny black boots and several big rocks on her fingers, including her wedding one.
‘Mr Taylor?’ she said, in a warm, guttural accent, striding towards him in a cloud of her own perfume, with her hand outstretched. ‘Marlene Hartmann.’
He shook it, feeling the bite of her rings cutting into his flesh.
She stood for a moment, staring at him with bright, inquisitive grey eyes, as if appraising him. Then she gave him what appeared to be a smile of approval.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s nice that you came here to see me. Please come to my office.’
Her mixture of considerable physical beauty and sexiness, combined with an element of professional coldness, reminded him of Alison Vosper. This woman definitely had a hard, don’t mess with me edge to her.
She ushered him through into a room that made him realize, for the first time, just how similar Cleo’s and Sandy’s taste in furniture was. This could be a room that had been decorated by either of them. It was carpeted in white and the walls also were in the purest white, relieved only by a triptych of white abstract paintings in black frames. There was a curved black lacquered desk, on which sat a computer terminal and some personal artefacts, a few fine plants and, strategically placed around the room, tall, abstract sculptures rose from plinths. In several places, white scented candles were burning here too, the same vanilla, but it was almost drowned out by the pungency of the woman’s perfume. He liked it, but it smelled masculine to him.
In front of the desk there were two high-backed upright chairs that looked as if they had come from a museum of modern art, and he sat down, as bidden, in one of them. It was marginally more comfortable than it looked.
Marlene Hartmann sat opposite him, behind her desk, opened a leather-bound notepad and picked up a black fountain pen.
‘So, first would you please tell me, Mr Taylor, how Transplantation-Zentrale may be of assistance to you? And perhaps, first, how it is you have heard of us?’
Being careful not to fall into an elephant trap, Grace said, ‘I found you on the Internet.’
From the way she nodded, approvingly, the answer seemed to satisfy her. ‘
Gut.
’
‘The reason I’ve come to see you is that my nephew – my sister’s son – who is eighteen years old, is suffering from liver failure. My sister is afraid that he will not get a transplant in time to save his life.’
He paused as the assistant brought him a cup of coffee and a jug of what he thought was milk but, when he poured, realized was cream.
‘You are based where, Mr Taylor?’
‘In Brighton, in Sussex.’
‘You have a system, I think, in your country that is – how do you say it in English? – a little arborary. No, arbitrary.’
‘You could say that,’ he agreed enthusiastically, doing all he could to bond with this woman and gain her trust.
Then, leaning across her desk towards him, she placed her elbows on the surface, interlocked her finely manicured hands and cradled her chin on them, peering, almost seductively, deep into his eyes.
‘Tell me, does your nephew have chronic or acute liver failure?’
Suddenly, to his horror, Grace found himself completely thrown. The bloody researcher had not differentiated between the two for him.
Acute
seemed the obvious answer to him. Acute smacked of urgency.
Chronic
, he knew, meant a disease that you lived with for years.
‘Acute liver failure,’ he replied.
She noted this down. Then she looked up at him. ‘So, what time frame do you think your nephew has?’
‘A month, maybe,’ he replied. ‘After that he may not even be strong enough to cope with transplant surgery.’
‘He is in which hospital?’
‘He has been treated at the Royal South London, but at the moment he’s back home.’
‘And what is the condition that the boy has?’
‘Auto-immune hepatitis,’ he said. ‘This is now causing severe cirrhosis.’
She marked this down, too, with a grimace, as if to show she understood the severity.
‘Can you tell me what service your company is able to provide?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we are approaching the Christmas holiday period, so I think we need to move quickly. Normally the transplant and aftercare are effected at a clinic somewhere within comfortable reach of the recipient’s home. If budget is a problem, there are certain cheaper alternatives, to have the operation in China, India and one or two other countries, for example.’
‘What is the price for a liver transplant in the UK?’
‘Do you know what is the blood grouping of your nephew?’
‘AB negative,’ he said.
Her eyes flickered and the faintest frown appeared on her face. ‘Not so common.’
‘I know.’
‘Our price for a liver is three hundred thousand euros. We need 50 per cent in advance, before we start to look, and 50 per cent on delivery, before the transplant takes place. We guarantee to find a matching liver within one week of receipt of the deposit.’
‘Even a rare blood group?’
‘Of course,’ she said, confidently.
‘So, with my nephew living in Brighton, in Sussex, in England, where would the transplant operation take place?’
‘Brighton is a nice city,’ she said.
‘You’ve been there?’
‘Brighton?
Ja
, sure. With my husband, we made a tour of England.’
‘So, you have a facility near to Brighton?’
‘We have many facilities around the world, Mr Taylor. That you have to trust us on. In some we have the facility for liver and kidney transplants, in some heart and lung, and in some all four. I can give you references who are very satisfied with our service. People who would not be alive today without what we do. But there is no pressure. In your country, a thousand people die each year because they are unable to obtain an organ for the operation which could have saved them. Yet one million, two hundred and fifty thousand people a year die in road accidents around the world. At Transplantation-Zentrale we are merely the facilitator. We are giving comfort to the families of loved ones who have died suddenly and tragically, by creating a use for their organs – in saving the lives of others. In doing this, you see, it gives some kind of purpose to each loved one’s death. You understand?’
‘Yes. Which do you do in Sussex?’
‘Liver and kidneys.’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘You carry an organ donor card yourself?’
He blushed. ‘No.’
‘You and most of the world. Yet, if you wake up tomorrow with kidney failure, Mr Taylor, you will be grateful that someone else did.’
‘Good point. Tell me something, is there anyone in the Brighton area who has used your services, who I could talk to?’
‘You will understand our client confidentiality.’
‘Naturally.’
‘I will check our records and, if there is someone in your area, I will contact them and see if they would be willing to talk to you.’
‘Thank you. Can you tell me which clinic you would use?’
She looked evasive. ‘I’m sorry, but that will depend on theatre availability. We won’t make a decision until closer to the time.’
‘A private facility or a National Health one?’
‘I don’t think your National Health would be very cooperative, Mr Taylor.’
‘Because this is illegal?’
‘If you want to call saving your nephew’s life illegal, then yes. Correct.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I have a plane to catch, so I am sorry – because you arrived late, we have to make this meeting short. Perhaps you want to think about what I have said? Take our literature home with you? We never do a hard sell here. Why? Because, simply this. Always there are desperate people – and always there are organs. It is nice to meet you, Mr Taylor. You have my email and my phone number. I am available 24/7.’
*
Marlene Hartmann’s limousine was waiting outside and she was anxious to get off to the airport – her schedule was tight. But she sat at her desk until she saw, on the CCTV camera, that Roy Grace had left the building, then she downloaded two of his photographs from the camera to her mobile phone and texted them to Vlad Cosmescu in Brighton, asking him if he could identify this man, urgently.
Mr Roger Taylor
, you are a liar, she thought to herself.
After ten years as an international organ broker she knew her market pretty well. She knew the way the system worked in the UK. If you were a patient suffering from
acute
liver failure, you would instantly be put on the liver transplant list and you would be hospitalized. You would not be well enough to be at home.
Roger Taylor, if that was his real name – and she thought not – had fallen at the first hurdle. Who was he? And why had he come to see her? She suspected from the man’s demeanour and the kinds of questions he was asking, that she already knew the answer.
Then, as she stood up to leave, her phone rang and her day suddenly got worse.
89
With the calm weather and the wide, empty expanse of the English Channel all around them, diving conditions – regardless of the near-freezing water temperature – were about as good as it got. Compared to a weed-infested lake or a murky canal booby-trapped with discarded shopping trolleys, barbed wire and chunks of jagged metal, today was, in the slang of the Specialist Search Unit, a
Gucci
dive.
But on the two monitors relaying video images from the diver’s camera, there was just a grey blur.
Jon Lelliott – better known as WAFI – assisted by Chris Dicks, nicknamed Clyde, had positively identified the wreck as being the Scoob-Eee. And he had found a body in the prow cabin that he was bringing to the surface now.
The rest of the team, accompanied by Glenn Branson, who was feeling a little wobbly but a lot better than on his last sea voyage, peered over the deck rail at the increasing mass of bubbles breaking the surface around the yellow, blue and red coils of the air and voice supply line, and the four ropes on which the buoyancy bag had been lowered. Moments later the masked head of WAFI appeared, accompanied seconds later by a body breaking the surface in a maelstrom of bubbles.
‘Oh shit!’ Gonzo exclaimed.
Branson turned away after one quick look, now struggling to hold down his breakfast.
WAFI pushed the body, which, supported by the air bags, was floating high in the water, towards the side of the boat.
Then several members of the team, clumsily aided by Glenn Branson, hauled on the ropes, pulling the heavy, waterlogged body up the side of the Sunseeker, over the deck rail.
The marine architect who had designed this craft had in his mind, most likely, that the rear sundeck would be adorned by wealthy playboys and beautiful, topless floozies. He probably never envisaged the sight that now greeted the SSU team and the hapless Detective Sergeant.
‘Poor sod,’ Arf said.
‘Definitely Jim Towers?’ Tania Whitlock asked him.
Although in charge of the Specialist Search Unit, the sergeant had been with the team for less than a year and did not know all the local harbour faces as well as some of her team.
He nodded grimly.
‘Definitely,’ Gonzo confirmed. ‘I’ve been working with him for about five years. That’s Jim.’
The man’s body was bound, up to his neck, with grey duct tape. His head poked above it, with just a single strip across his mouth. A small crab skittered across the tape, and Arf ducked down, grabbed it and threw it back overboard.
‘Fuckers,’ he said. ‘I hate them.’
Glenn could see why.
The heavily bearded lower part of the dead man’s face was intact. But some of the flesh from his cheeks and forehead, and the muscle and sinews beneath, were gone, leaving patches of bare skull. One eye socket had been picked clean. The other contained the remnants of the white of an eye, reduced to the size of a raisin.
‘Don’t think I’ll be ordering the crab and avocado starter for a while,’ quipped Glenn, trying to put on a brave face.
‘Anyone here fancy being buried at sea?’ Juice enquired.
There were no takers.
90
Vlad Cosmescu was a worried man. He sat at his desk with his computer in front of him, no longer enjoying the view out across the Brighton seafront. Every half-hour or so he checked the latest online news on the local paper, the
Argus
.
He had been smarting ever since that phone call last week.
You’ve screwed up.
For years this city had been a great gig for him. Awash with money and girls. Providing him with the cash to keep his handicapped sister in a nice home. And the income to keep him in a lifestyle he could once only have dreamed of.
He did not like to be told he had screwed up.
He had always been obsessively careful. Gaining the trust of his employees. Steadily building up his business empire here. The massage parlours. Escort agencies. The lucrative drug deals. And, more recently, the German connection. The organ trade was the best business of all. Every successful transplant put tens of thousands of pounds in his pocket. And from there, straight into his Swiss bank account.
If he had learned one thing about his adopted country, it was that the police were focused on the trafficking of drugs. Everything else took a back seat. Which was OK by him.
Everything had worked just fine. Until Jim Towers.
Maybe the boatman had made a genuine mistake in putting those bodies in a dredge area. But he did not think so. Towers had tried to screw him – whatever his motive. Morality? Blackmail?